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The 57 Bus Dashka Slater Essay

696 Words3 Pages

Never play with fire; it could ruin your life and someone else you don’t even know. In the novel The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, a true story novel focusing on themes of homophobia and arson. A 16 year old boy named Richard, lit an agender’s skirt on fire. The reasoning behind his actions was because he didn’t agree with transgenders, saying: “I don’t have any problem with somebody if they like men. But what if you do too much? Nobody cares, really”(Slator 140). Although, he isn’t the kid everyone makes him out to be. Richard, pre-incident, starts out as a hard-working, kind hearted but immature teenage boy, but, with his cousin's influence, he is portrayed as a man full of hate and considered cruel; leading into 5 years of juvenile prison. If you don’t know someone, you can’t make an impression on someone. …show more content…

Withholding this information, it means that people understand he was kind and wouldn’t be able to understand how the media says he was cruel. Another great quality Richard had was hard-working, he was able to pull himself out of a bad situation and regain focus on his future. We are told by his internship leader that he stood out, how: “Richard did an amazing job during his internship” (97). Understanding this, tells the reader that from an outside perspective, he can do things. However, knowing he is hard-working, he also has some bad qualities. Richard was not doing well in school, in the chapter Miss Kaprice tells us: “His grades are poor, his attendance spotty” (67). Finally, this makes us understand that no matter how the media portrays Richard, he will still be the same guy he always was no matter the crime. If you did something wrong, would you want the media to find

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Consequential Decisions Many people challenge the following idea: how far can a prank go before it is no longer a joke? Richard Thomas, a 16 year old African-American male, battles this idea in Dashka Slater's narrative nonfiction book, The 57 Bus. While on the bus with his friends, Richard gets pressured into lighting a sleeping person’s skirt on fire as a funny prank. The prank immediately gets out of hand and results in his arrest and the hospitalization of the victim. Intended as a joke, the media views Richard as a terrible monster for what he’s done.

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Indeed, Richard is known to go along with peer pressure. The book says “You can’t hear what Jamal says as he hands Richard the lighter… He flicked the lighter by the hem of Sasha’s skirt.” (Slater 111) Richard listens to his friend Jamal who says to light Sasha’s skirt on fire.

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If you had someone look at your life and write a book, would your story be portrayed negatively? Richard, a 16-year-old black teenager who lives in Oakland, did the unthinkable. Sasha, a teenager who identifies as gender non-binary, was on a bus on their way home, and while they were sleeping, Richard lit their skirt on fire. In the nonfiction book The 57 Bus, Dashka Slater uses a lack of background context to showcase Richard’s single story and biased opinions about his life. In the 57 Bus, Dashka Slater provided an insufficient amount of background knowledge, which led us to believe that Richard was mentally and emotionally unstable.

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In the San Francisco Bay Area of California, nearly 500,000 people identify as gay, bisexual, or transgender out of 7,753,000 people. Sasha in the book The 57 Bus identifies as genderqueer and is a part of the LGBTQ community, Sasha is later set on fire by a teenage boy named Richard on their way home from school because Sasha was wearing a skirt. In Dashka Slater’s The 57 Bus, Sasha and Richard are similar in their love and compassion towards friends and family, yet are very different in how they act outside of school.

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He’s a really nice boy” (75).Miss Narwin gave Phil chance after chance and kept convincing herself that Philip was a nice kid and a good student. She tried so hard to still believe he was a good kid, even after his repeating behavior in her class. Miss Narwin overwhelmed like everyone else, being forced to stay at home and just listen to all the chaos around her due to the fake news that started with Philip. Miss Narwin complains. “I should be in school right now this moment, teaching my students the literature I love”(172).The job that

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Gender is like water, it’s fluid, someday that ideology will be accepted. The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater handles the topic of gender diversity. It talks about a gender-nonconforming person named Sasha and their experience living in America and how America treated them. The book tackles the topic by helping the reader understand the journey and course Sasha had to figure out how they identify compared to others. It also signifies that Sasha isn’t much different from others just because of their identity- that they’re just as normal as everyone else.

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Chapter 5 marks a change to Richard’s life and family: his grandmother and Addie has declared that Richard is “...dead to me, dead to Christ” (Wright 184). Richard leaves Addie’s school and goes to a public school. However, his grandmother refuses to pay for his clothes and books, causing his clothing to become “so shabby that I [Richard] was ashamed to go to school.” The emotions that Richard feel dramatize the state of his clothes- they must be in horrific condition for him to feel ashamed to go to school! Richard emphasizes this by saying, “I grew so bitter that I decided to have it out with Granny; I would tell her that if she did not let me work on Saturdays I would leave home.”

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Richard has always felt the unjust of race, and has felt how segregation made it hard for him to have a future. But when he gets a chance to get revenge on the whites, he refuses when he thinks ”Who wanted to look them straight in the face, who wanted to walk and act like a man.(200)” Stealing went against his morals of the right way to succeed and would not help the community appearance to the whites. The community as a whole is very religous but Richard does not share these beliefs, even with the persistence of his friends and family he says ”Mama, I don't feel a thing.(155)” This caused his friends to beg him, but in face of rejection they leave him alone.

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Richard first struck me as uptight, scared and unwilling. Then he surprised me, he took up an adventure with an old man known as Skink, to find his cousin. Skink says “I intend to find your cousin, want to come?”so Richard goes on a hunt across florida to find her. His feats include tackling a man with a gun, lying to a deranged lunatic, and faces a wild boar to tell the tale! Richard shows incredible bravery doing this and proves my statement time and time again throughout this book, that bravery is doing what is right no matter the

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So it is due to hunger, hardship and scarcity that he is introduced to the harsh actualities of bigotry. On occasion, things deteriorated that Richard and his family had nothing to consume in view of the extraordinary level of poverty. In order to save themselves from the conditions

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However, they expose him to religion in violent and mentally abusive ways that make their purpose larger than religion itself while completely ignoring Richard’s attempts to make his own choices with religion. Even as Richard becomes older and more able to think for himself, his family’s actions only intensify and they forever change his opinion on religion. However, while Richard’s family was unethical in the way they exposed him to religion, their actions truly reflect the hardships that are associated with a poor African American family during their time. Throughout his childhood, Richard is constantly exposed to religion in unethical ways by his family.

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During the time Richard is describing his attitude toward life, he says, “At the age of twelve I had an attitude towards life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical” (Wright 100). This shows how Richard is starting to discern that his life will be harder than some of his peers. He realizes that to survive he will have to subdue his feelings and curiosity. Even though he vasts for knowledge he knows that his curiosity could be his demise.

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“I had a series of petty jobs for short periods, quitting some to work elsewhere, being driven off others because of my attitude, my speech, the look in my eyes” (Wright 182). Richard is at first confused why he is being fired, but as it happens more and more he learns the smallest actions can infuriate white people. Richard struggles to accept these features that are deemed unacceptable and adjusts his behavior in the presence of whites. “What I had heard

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This is evidenced further in Richard’s soliloquy when he disparagingly says, “But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking glass; I, that am rudely stamp’d” (I.i.14-16). The shift from ‘Our’ to ‘I’ emphasizes Richard’s isolation and affirms his vulnerable characterization. Richard also garners sympathy from the audience by enlisting them as his accomplices or allies for his future crimes. The audience inevitably becomes invested in Richard’s journey and can identify with his hunger for power.

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Richard the character in the book, portrays the author from when he faced hardship in school. He got criticized by his teacher because of his social class. Richard got frustrated with himself for being so poor and in need of relief. He was upset with the fact that he got embarrassed in front of his classmates and especially Helene. This all justifies the fact that the most shameful event in Richards and Dick Gregory's life took place during his childhood and at

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